love within his grasp; and the woman to whom it mattered most of all, who
was worth it all, and more than all where he was concerned, said to him
in this moment of revelation, "What would you like for lunch?"

With an air as casually friendly as her own, he put another hand on the
fingers lying on his arm, patted them, and said gaily, "Anything I can
see. As a drover once said to me, 'I can clean as fur as I can reach.'"

In just such a temper also they had parted when he went back to his
"pigsty" with Jim. To Gabriel Druse he had said all that one man might
say to another without excess of feeling; to Madame Bulteel he had given
a gold pencil which he had always worn; to Fleda he gave nothing, said
little, but the few words he did say told the story, if not the whole
story.

"It's a nice room," he said, and she had flushed at his words, "and I've
had the best time of my life in it. I'd like to buy it, but I know it's
not for sale. Love and money couldn't buy it--isn't that so?"

Then had--come days in his own home, still with bandaged eyes, but with
the bandages removed for increasing hours every day; yet no one at all in
the town knowing the truth except the Mayor, Halliday the lawyer, and one
or two others who kept the faith until Ingolby gave them the word to
speak. Then had come the Mayor's visit to Montreal, the great meeting,
the fire at Manitou, and now Ingolby on the way to his tryst with Fleda.
They had met twice only since he had left Gabriel Druse's house, and on
the last occasion they had looked each other full in the eyes, and
Ingolby had said to her in the moment they had had alone:

"I'm going to get back, but I can't do it without you."